A Eureka woman died in a motorcycle accident in Fairfield last Wednesday, the California Highway Patrol reported.

Mary Hadley, listed by the Solano County Coroner’s Office as both a resident of Eureka and Fairfield, died one day after her 55th birthday when the driver of a Harley Davidson motorcycle she was riding on as a passenger lost control.

“For unknown reasons, the driver was unable to maintain control of the motorcycle and both the driver and the female passenger were ejected from the motorcycle,” a Solano County area CHP report states.

Both the driver — identified as Stephen Chiara, 47 of Fairfield — and Hadley were taken to NorthBay Medical Center in Fairfield with major injuries. Hadley succumbed to her injuries at the medical center.

Alcohol is suspected as a factor in the incident, according to the CHP.

Hadley worked in the Humboldt County Public Defenders Office “for several years,” according to Public Defender Marek Reavis, but he did not specify in what capacity.

“We are all very saddened by her death,” Reavis said in an email to the Times-Standard.

Chiara also appears to have ties to Humboldt County, according to court records.

In 1991, Stephen Duane Chiara, then 20, was arrested in connection with a Fortuna woman, Mary Kesser, after he was found hiding with a sawed-off shotgun in a closet at a residence close to Kesser’s Fortuna home, according to Times-Standard reporting from the time. Kesser was found “beaten and stabbed with a heavy, sharp object,” the Times-Standard reported in November 1991. Chiara was reportedly hired by Kesser’s husband who sought to kill her for insurance money, the Times-Standard reported in 2006.

More than two decades passed before Chiara was convicted of first-degree murder in late 2014, according to court records. Court records indicate he pleaded guilty at the time. He was transferred from Humboldt County jail to a state prison in 2015 and was paroled to the San Francisco Bay Area in July 2018, according to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.